Donald Trump brought a lot of new people into the Republican party. Despite losing the 2020 election, he still received the second most votes in American history.
At the same time, many have left the party because of Trump. And that includes a number of former campaign strategists. On Wednesday Nicolle Wallace talked to some of those strategists about how the GOP should move forward.
Tim Miller told the host, “People who want their political careers to keep going are willing to lie for him. Some of these are working in politics, not just voters, but voters are part of a cult now. The cognitive dissonance doesn’t really matter now any more than the cognitive dissonance of what David Koresh was telling his followers what mattered to them. “
Matthew Dowd took it a step further. “First, Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, all who have spoken out need to leave their caucus,” he said,. “By staying in their caucus, all they are doing is enabling the fact that the people who committed the big lie will hold power in 2022. Yeah, it’s fine to say, ‘I have a big problem with this,’ but leave the caucus. You have to leave the cult in order to disempower the cult.”
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Former Bush strategist Matthew Dowd calls on Adam Kinzinger, Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney need to leave the Republican party. pic.twitter.com/Rs8Q3k9aoN
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) May 27, 2021
The Republican party is something much different now than it used to be. And it feels like people like Kinzinger, Cheney and Romney have already lost. Whether they are willing to go as far as leaving their party remains to be seen.
Todd Neikirk is a New Jersey based politics and technology writer. His work has been featured in psfk.com, foxsports.com and hillreporter.com. He enjoys sports, politics, comic books and spending time at the shore with his family.
